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“You’re the ones who decided this is what you were going to do. You mocked us, you’ve done everything you could. You attacked us in an airport, you sidewinded us. So let me make a point here: if you want to stick our head in a blast furnace, do it.”

by Danilo Castro

Summer is officially here. As busy schedules make way for warm weather and lounging by the pool, it’s the perfect time to catch up on the extensive catalogues of your favorite streaming services. Because it can be a little daunting choosing where to begin, we’ve selected ten quality films coming this month to some of the most popular streaming platforms. From Golden Age Hollywood to epic blockbusters, the diverse picks on this list are the perfect way to get summer movie watching underway.

It won’t be remembered as a rumble as royal as Ali vs. Fraizer, but 16 April, 2015 will go down as the day two of the most highly anticipated films of 2015/2016 squared off for their fair share of fawning/frightening fanboy love/hate. First out of the gate was the long awaited second “trailer” for Star Wars VII: The Force Awakens. Featuring more footage from the December release, as well as a final shot that sent aging admirers into a tizzy (more on this in a moment), it was greeted with glee.

Orphan Mei-Mei (Zhu Lin) thinks she’s found the opportunity of a lifetime when she travels to Sydney for a concert with the children’s choir from her orphanage. For Mei-Mei, Australia is more than just a foreign country that offers a chance to see something new and learn a little about the wider world. It’s also the home of her long-time sponsor, Dean Randall (Guy Pearce). Though Mei-Mei and Dean have never met, they’ve exchanged dozens of postcards and letters over the course of a decade. Mei-Mei writes to Mr. Randall and tells him that she’s eager to see him while visiting from China.

But Mr. Randall doesn’t write back. Mei-Mei and her schoolmates arrive in Sydney, excited by the sights of the exotic city. Despite the joy of traveling with the children, Mei-Mei is eager to find Mr. Randall even if Miss Chen (Elaine Jin) expressly forbids her from leaving the hotel to find him. The 16-year-old girl’s journey to find her sponsor—and the truth about him—will forever alter the lives of the pair. By contrasting the postcards that Dean Randall wrote Mei-Mei with his actual life, we come to see something about how we construct ourselves in text and how powerfully we dream to be something other than ourselves. While director Pauline Chan’s 33 Postcards is predictable at times, it’s still a worthwhile movie and great coming-of-age tale.

Ambition is in short supply in today’s Hollywood. Yes, some might consider Christopher Nolan’s take on Batman to be a bit on the grand side, but he’s also dealing with material that is decidedly outsized. That he keeps his comic book characters grounded in a sense of reality and humanity is about as far as his vision goes. No, unless it’s micromanaged down to a specific niche demo and accompanying formula, unless it’s made to maximize receipts both here and (more importantly) abroad, Tinseltown tends to steer clear. Perhaps that’s why the web has been buzzing over the first trailer from the seemingly epic effort from The Matrix‘s Wachowskis in collaboration with Run Lola Run‘s Tom Tykwer. In scope and storytelling span alone, the October release of Cloud Atlas appears destined to stir passions and fuel aesthetic debate.

When you consider the background of the artists involved, such schisms would be hard to deny. Andy and Lana (formerly Larry) made a massive splash with their philosophical sci-fi take on virtual reality. To this day, fanboys are either celebrating their trilogy as one of the best, or lamenting its placement in the law of diminishing sequel returns. As for Tykwer, he’s been out of the loop since Franka Potente turned a goal of saving her misguided boyfriend into a three part exercise in gamer grandstanding. Sure, he’s made five films since then (and a few before), but outside of Perfume: The Story of a Murder he’s not been part of the practiced industry conversation. In fact, outside The International, few recent audiences would know who he is.